Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) is sending a strong signal about a "all-in" strategy for artificial intelligence (AI), with a capital spending plan of 115 - 135 billion USD in 2026, nearly double last year's 72 billion USD.
Most of this huge investment will be poured into building data centers, expanding AI computing infrastructure and recruiting talents to develop new generation AI models, aiming to create a super-smart system.
Compared to previous years, Meta's spending scale has increased sharply. The company once spent 28 billion USD in 2023 and 39 billion USD in 2024, but is now ready to surpass even major competitors like Google, which spent about 93 billion USD last year.
The main driving force helping Meta maintain a high investment rate is the online advertising segment, which continues to grow impressively. In Q4, revenue reached 59.89 billion USD, up 24% over the same period; profit reached 22.76 billion USD, up 9.2%.
According to Meta, AI investments have significantly improved the ability to target advertising, video suggestions and distribute personalized content.
Our proposal system is driving growth across the entire advertising ecosystem, but this is just the beginning compared to the potential ahead," CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared at a meeting with investors.
Immediately after this information, Meta shares increased by 10% in the off-hour trading session.
After a period of being assessed as lagging behind in the AI race, Meta has restructured its entire AI division, pouring tens of billions of USD to recruit new leaders and experts.
The largest deal was an investment of 14.3 billion USD in Scale AI, and the appointment of CEO Alexandr Wang as AI Director.
Meta also established TBD Lab, co-led by Wang and Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub), to develop a new AI model codenamed Avocado, expected to be launched in the first half of this year. This will be an important test when compared to models from Google and OpenAI.
Along with AI, Meta is reducing its metaverse ambitions. The company has laid off 10% of its personnel at Reality Labs, the division in charge of virtual reality products.
Although declaring not to give up metaverse, Meta is shifting its focus to AI smart glasses and augmented reality. Reality Labs recorded revenue of $955 million in the latest quarter but lost up to $6 billion.
A new initiative called Meta Compute will promote the construction of large-scale data centers that can use dozens of gigawatts of electricity in this decade.
Meta also appointed Dina Powell McCormick as president in charge of financial deals related to data infrastructure.
Currently, Meta's application ecosystem has 3.58 billion users, an increase of 7% compared to the previous year; the human resources force reached 78,865 people. However, some investors are still concerned that the benefits from AI need to keep up with the huge spending speed that the company is pursuing.
